Harrisburg University to have a new varsity sports team - for video gaming!

by ASHLEY HONEA

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Harrisburg University has officially joined the National Associate for Collegiate eSports (NACE) and announced Wednesday the start of it’s recruiting process for students to join the school’s first varsity sports team- for gamers.

eSports is competitive video gaming at a professional level and now, students at Harrisburg University will be able to play and compete against eSports teams at any other university and college.

Through it’s eSports program, Harrisburg University is offering 15 full athletic scholarships to students who make the team, thanks to its partnership with NACE.

For a competition arena, HU is working with the Whitaker Center, which will open up it’s digital cinemas for eSports teams to compete on massive screens while hundreds of spectators enjoy the match from their theatre seats.

“They’re going to be competing on a 40-foot screen in our digital cinema,” says Ted Black, the President and CEO of the Whitaker Center. “No one in the country has anything remotely close to this. It’s really a paradigm shift in the eSports genre.”

HU is the first school in Central Pennsylvania, and even the mid-Atlantic region, to join NACE.

The university’s varsity eSports program will kick off its first season in the Fall of 2018.